10 Best Psychological Horror Games on Xbox Series X|S (November 2025)

I don’t know about you, but I’m not one to scare easily from jump scares and unsettling images. Give me a frightening thought, developed meticulously over a compelling story that clutches its straws on my nerve endings, and I’m toast. 

The best psychological horror games work their way into your thought process, challenging the way you think and perceive life, so much so that days and weeks after you’ve played them, you’re still reeling from the thought of something sinister happening.

Don’t worry. Gamers who crave these types of games know exactly the kind of dread they can take. If you’re up for the challenge, here are the best psychological horror games on Xbox Series X/S I dare you to try out. 

10. The Medium

As far as I’m concerned, a medium is the scariest job. And The Medium is asking you to take up the role for the day. What’s more? The case you’ll be solving will lead you down the most suspenseful and disturbing path, and you might want to quit. 

But that’s just it. It’s dark mysteries like the one in this game that keep you going, wanting to bust the case wide open. Even though every step deeper into the spirit world chills your bones to the core. 

9. Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut

You won’t be saving the princess, the damsel in distress, in Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut. You’ll be killing her, and for good reason. She’ll, of course, try to work her way into your mind. Don’t let her deceive you. 

As a visual novel, you’re compelled to make pretty tough choices that actually matter. And you spend quite some time thinking through your decisions. It’s either your lie or the princess’s. Who will you choose?

8. Still Wakes the Deep

Another of the best psychological horror games on Xbox Series X/S is Still Wakes the Deep. It immerses you in an impressively realistic adaptation of an offshore oil rig in 1970s Scotland. A vicious storm has struck your workstation, sending everything around you into devastating collapse.

Now, you have to save yourself and your crew from fatal doom. But in the heat of finding an exit, you also encounter an otherworldly horror, an entity to be more afraid of. 

7. The Outlast Trials

It’s during the Cold War, and Murkoff Corporation is taking you and your friends in as human guinea pigs. Truly inhumane tests that you have to survive through. It’s the only way out, to go through all the tests and come out in one piece.

The Outlast Trials won’t just test your sense of humanity but also your endurance. And even when you pass the tests, you may be left scarred for life. 

6. Inscryption

Inscryption is quite a unique indie psychological horror game. It tests your survival through the creepiest cabin, where someone is watching your every move. Your only way of survival is unlocking cards, which themselves come with preposterous ways of unlocking them, including surgery and self-mutilation.

Still, this might be the more all-around psychological horror you’re looking for, with a mysterious story to unravel. Your progress further into the cabin reveals tantalizing secrets that result in a disturbing but engaging odyssey.  

5. Layers of Fear

All your answers lie in the old paintings of your father, dispersed all across a Victorian mansion. A truly unforgettable story, revealing dark secrets and mysteries perhaps best left undisturbed. 

Layers of Fear has mastered the art of chilling storytelling for your benefit. It sparks a keen interest in observing and exploring every item possible, looking for clues and missing puzzle pieces.

And yet, even when you draw closer to the truth, your journey continues to emphasize just how difficult reliving and consequently facing your past can be. 

4. Neverending Nightmares

Neverending Nightmares’ creator has their own struggles with depression and OCD. And through their personal experience, they crafted a truly terrifying journey through one’s own “never-ending nightmares.” 

You’re defenseless in your dreams, desperate to wake up into reality. But first, you must face the monsters manifesting in your dreams, haunting your every thought and move.

3. Observer

Our own minds are often in shambles. So, what of living in the minds of others? Observer takes you to a futuristic 2048, where a neural detective uses their implant to hack into the minds of others. 

While you’re able to extract useful information aiding your investigations, whether feelings, thoughts, or memories, it doesn’t always leave your mind at its best. Your own mind could crumble, possibly going insane. 

It’s quite a unique gameplay system of making sense of the clues you find. And all the while navigating a world plunged into war and cyber-plague. Hopelessness burrows deep, with people, including yourself, resorting to mind-altering drugs.

2. Phasmophobia

The best psychological horror games on Xbox Series X/S include Phasmophobia. You can bring your friends along for this one, forging into ten different haunted mansions. It’s more fun that way, hunting ghosts and any paranormal activity abounding in these locations. 

Upon exploration, you gather as much evidence as possible, using the ghost-hunting equipment at your disposal. And then pass it on to a ghost removal team to hunt down over 20 different ghost types, each with unique traits, personalities, and abilities. 

Uniquely, you can talk to the ghosts, too, using Ouija Boards and EVP Sessions using a Spirit Box to find out about their backgrounds and any other useful tips.

1. Visage

In horror games, I find piecing together the story via visual clues and exploration to be the best way to go. And Visage makes the most of that, gradually building tension the deeper you explore a mysterious house. It’s clear terrible things have happened here, but what exactly? 

Shadowy corridors, endless mazes, and twisted environments reel you further into discovering the haunting past that still reeks in the walls of every room. And with that, we wrap up our list of the best psychological horror games on Xbox Series X/S.